Disability: Rights & Seeking Equity

First and foremost we will be seeking to hear the policy devised by our disabled Members. And spearpointing that will be their work on creating a "disability act", intended to meet the needs of the disabled community & provide disabled people with clearer rights than those laid out in the Equality Act.

But we also want to implement a new national social care service to provide caring services free at the point of provision for both disabled people and the elderly. This will enable us to raise the quality - and quantity - of care available.

We will nationalise Motability/mobility aid schemes & fold them into the new national social care service - because transport should be freely available to disabled people.

We will scrap disability assessments. We can trust the efforts of GPs and consultants and there is no real need to put disabled people through the hardship of repeated assessment in the first place.

We will work to increase accessibility of bus and rail services, particularly provision of route info on transportation and at stops/stations, via a unified national app, and other measures to be developed in consultation with disabled people.

And there's a lot more policy in this area to be developed.

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by Ali Wilkin

edited by John Urquhart

On the 9th April, the BBC released a report by investigative journalist Noel Titheradge on the use of prone restraints on a 12 year old autistic child at a school for learning disabled children in Leeds. The CCTV of the incident shows 5 staff callously restraining the 12 year old child. Experts have described their conduct as “too brutal, unnecessary, and unlawful”. This happened in a ‘calm’ or seclusion room - these have been described as resembling a holding cell. The report is part of an ongoing investigation by the BBC into ‘calm’ or ‘safe’ rooms. The report follows the emergence of CCTV of non-speaking pupils being abused at a school in London last year. 

The management of Springwell Leeds Academy North say that they have investigated this matter on ‘multiple’ occassions. They claim that staff at their school have ‘no case to answer’ in relation to this incident. Nevertheless, experts in the use of restraints and prone restraints on learning disabled children who have reviewed the CCTV have highlighted how brutal and traumatising a child being dragged face down to the ground by multiple adults will have been. Eric Baskind has highlighted that increasing the hostility of the situation is “the very opposite” of what those adults should have been seeking to achieve. 

The management of the school startlingly consider this to be a ‘difference of opinion’. That same management have claimed that the CCTV footage shown by journalists is “selective”. But we wish to be clear there is no context in which such violent restraint is necessary.

Guidelines for the restraint of children have been in place for more than 13 years: NICE, Ofsted and NHS England all place an emphasis on restraint reduction, and all concur that it should never involve prone restraint. In 2019 a parliamentary investigation was done into children’s experiences of restraint and the physical, mental, and emotional impacts of restraints. This led to the publication, in June of that year, of government guidance into reducing the use of restraints, which MENCAP called “long overdue”.

It is increasingly clear these guidelines are insufficient - while on the enforcement side, years of deliberate underfunding of SEND education also play their part. We plan to conduct a policy review into this specific issue in the immediate future.

But our preexisting policies could also help. A National Care Service, where caregivers are both fully trained in their specialised area, and properly recompensed for their specialist skills, is now absolutely vital. It cannot be clearer that learning disabled and autistic children are being failed, not just educationally, but as whole people who require their environment to be adapted to their needs. It is plain that the adults entrusted with their care must have specialised training in the impacts of their disabilities. Most of all it is badly needed that we invest in disabled young people directly, investing in them with the same belief, and the same optimism, that we all have long wished to see this country invest in our able bodied children. 

Ultimately we want to be clear that whether they will be able to go on to work or not, each and every one of them has the ability to give something of great value back to their community.  

by consensus of the Disability Activism Society

written by Ali Wilkin

edited by John Urquhart

Rachel Reeves and Labour have tried to dismiss claims that this is Austerity 2.0 - yet disabled people across the country understood perfectly the messaging no matter the attempt at spin. Same old Labour, same old attempt to spin: but look closely and you’ll see that spin was a reaction to disabled people’s organisations rallying, indeed, building from nothing this past fortnight.

We have been amongst that - our members in the midst - and have witnessed the legitimate and genuine fear that this budget has provoked. This is Austerity 2.0, and if you voted Labour to “get the Tories out” - we’re sorry, but you didn’t succeed.

After all this hostile environment intended to prevent disabled people from existing, one way or another, is very much kin to the hostile environment intended to make life harsh and difficult for immigrants in order to appease racist bigotry. And Labour is taking steps to deepen that hostile environment as well as the one being intensified for disabled people: boasting about sending refugees back to the places they spent such energy and such valour escaping in the first place. There are no illegal humans; disabled or foreign, we all belong just where we want to be.

Upon the release of the Green Paper red flags were raised immediately by disabled people’s organisations. It was apparent quickly that these proposals would impact already stretched local authority social care budgets, likely to breaking point. This, of course, leaves them vulnerable to privatisation. And who can help but feel uneasy about that with the NHS under the control of a Secretary of Health who fired 9,000 NHS staff after taking £53,000 from a private healthcare recruiter.

Using the testing system for a non-means tested benefit that does not measure ability for work but the impact of disability. Increasing the impact of existing impairments, as these cuts will do (not least by harming the availability of social care by stretching local services even further beyond breaking point) has a terrible likelihood of being deeply exclusionary. 

And a more exclusionary system, in contradiction of both nationally and internationally established rights is nothing short of frightening. 

Making these changes by Acts of Parliament is a fascistic overreach of the State.

As observed in the British Medical Journal, the health outcomes of increased poverty will be deleterious. These choices are unlikely to increase so-called economic activity. After all, the myriad failings of the previous 14 years of Conservative Austerity is strong evidence that Labour’s sequel will not be effective.

“Policies justified on the grounds of austerity - including real term reductions in the value of benefits, stricter eligibility requirements, and harsher sanctions - have harmed health and pushed millions of people into poverty. The cost of living has risen sharply in recent years, leaving prices far higher than they were just five years ago. The combined result is that, ever since 2010, more people in Britain are experiencing destitution and many more people in full time work live in poverty.”

Source: BMJ 2025;388:r613

The government makes much of the rise in numbers of chronically ill and disabled people claiming benefits. Yet viruses are known to be disabling, and we just underwent a major global pandemic - and thus a major global disabling event. Every disabled advocate for the last five years has been excruciatingly clear about this risk.

Tere are more than 16.1 million disabled people in this country and of those, just 3.9 million claim benefits. Many of them should be claiming benefits: the fact they are not is costing this country more in the long run. People can thrive - if they are given the support they need. Sometimes they can even thrive - just less so - on a fraction of what is needed, as so many disabled people are right achieving right now.

Our fragmenting healthcare service, caused by years of deliberating gutting proper funding for a full and functioning NHS (in order to privatise healthcare), is not disabled people’s choice, or even our responsibility. The inability of social care to meet the growing need - again because of the deliberate gutting to funding in order to privatise the system) is not disabled people’s choice or responsibility.

These things are the collective responsibility of all of us; that they have not been maintained is a national shame, and we must be clear and honest with one another about this. The fact is that these things have decayed to the state they are now in as a result of choices - and many have stood by and watched and said nothing.

But cutting the funding doesn’t eradicate the need - and sooner or later, the piper must be paid.

The case of David*, recently brought to light by the Disability News Service, and on whose death we have spoken, is one of many that demonstrates the reality of the impact of Austerity on disabled people. 

There is a falsehood being practiced by successive governments: that you can starve disabled and sick people into employment. It leverages a societal prejudice about being able to fake a claim for disability benefits, when the rate of fraud within the welfare system hasn’t changed since before that idea became fodder for tabloid journalism in 2008. It is zero for PIP, and negligible for ESA and the disability portion of UC. 

And even if it were any more than that, it would not justify the sanctions, the impoverishment, the abuse and the literal murder of so many of us - David, Jodey Whiting, Pippa Day and Errol Graham to name but a few; and the constant threats that disabled people have endured, first under the Conservatives, and now under Labour. 

We will not be treated like a family member to be kept hidden until they die; so often nobody will speak for us while we live. Our hard fought for, hard won rights will not be given away to anyone. Most especially we refuse, as loudly as we must, to be used as the fear stick for the working class - as a divisive instrument intended to prevent people from speaking up for themselves. Workers deserve good conditions and good pay, and disabled people deserve to work if they so wish to - because work, ultimately, should be a choice. It should not be mandatory.

One of the greatest lies of our era is that work is mandatory. 

We should not be forced to work on pain of death - and disabled people should not be killed to frighten the rest into obedience.

You can read our prior statement on the cuts here.

* David's name has been changed to preserve anonymity following the lead of Disability News Service.

by consensus of the Disability Activism Society

written by Ali Wilkin

edited by John Urquhart

“David*” was 59. He was single, like many disabled and chronically ill people. He had a sister he spoke to often on the phone. He had been unable to work for 25 years. This was due to ME/CFS.

ME/CFS is a post-viral condition that causes severe chronic fatigue, cognitive impairments and can affect mobility, as it did in David’s case. He also had fibromyalgia, an inflammatory disease, and diverticulitis which is a disease that affects the large intestine, and latterly his continence. 

His health had worsened over the past year. He was finding life increasingly difficult. David already struggled with his mobility, but he had suffered several falls and was reporting losing up to a cup of blood in his stools. 

After receiving his PIP forms for reassessment, he found the form hard to complete in good time. As his sister later pointed out, even if he had been able to do so, his mobility had worsened to the point that he would not have been able to get to the post box to send the form back to the DWP.

His PIP was stopped by the DWP on January 4th of this year. 

But David was recovering from an eye infection and he was unable to read his post properly for some time. 

His sister believes he did not know his money had been stopped until after February 1st, which was the date of their last conversation. 

No safeguarding assessment was conducted prior to the termination of his benefit. 

Over the last 15 years disabled people have sought to describe what the government has been inflicting on us by way of the welfare system. 

Very often the language of domestic violence is used, because so often it seems to fit the experience. After all, governments have, since Margaret Thatcher’s day, used the analogy of the domestic income to justify cutting funding to certain departments, or the privatisation of public services, for decades.

Of course the analogy of the domestic income was always problematic - working and middle class households don’t have private standing armies of their own to fund, for example!

But since the announcement of this Labour government’s brutal cuts to PIP and the health component of UC, disabled people have been clear. There has been unity. The hashtag #WelfareNotWarfare arose directly from those recurring conversations we all had - Labour has declared a resumption of a Tory war: their enemy is disabled people. 

But even before Labour’s New Austerity can be fully implemented (if they should be allowed to do so), the hostile environment of Tory Austerity continues to hurt our community terribly. Not least because that long war has claimed another one of us - one of hundreds of thousands so far.

David is believed to have died on February 19th. He was found in appalling circumstances. He had no money to buy pads to manage his diverticulitis. He had no money to put credit on his phone to call for help.

He was found in the most distressing of circumstances; he was covered in blood and faeces, and he had left a handwritten note, describing his desperation and deteriorating health. 

Two weeks after his death, David received a notification from the DWP that his PIP would be reinstated on 20th February - however, disturbingly, David’s sister believes that this decision was only made after the DWP was notified of David’s death on 21st February. 

“It was an absolutely brutal thing to do to a vulnerable person,” David’s sister said. “And I can only imagine the psychological distress that he must have felt when he did read the letter.”

It must be stressed: while the Tories initiated the Austerity that killed David, Labour did nothing in the time since Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister to prevent his death. 

After all, David’s death happened this year, under this Labour government, in a DWP led by a Labour minister - one which is so reviled, so mistrusted, that it is incredibly easy to believe his sister’s suggestion that that a claim be restarted after death, as a face saving exercise. 

David’s circumstances are as unjust, as violent and as profoundly inhumane as Errol Graham’s, Jodey Whiting’s and Philippa Day’s - and these are but a few.

We say it is Liz Kendall, Sir Stephen Timms and, ultimately, Sir Keir Starmer, who must answer for the killing of David. 

But as is only right we give the final words of this statement to David in the form of an excerpt from an email he sent to his sister last summer:

“...I get the lowest amount [of PIP] possible when I am entitled to the full amount possible.

The bloody gov is being so unfair and cruel to the disabled. I got an application form to fill to them the reality of my life.

Like some bad days when I can’t even get to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. 

I simply now did not have the energy to appeal and go to a tribunal in person where three doctors question you.”

* We are choosing to use the same name given to the anonymous gentleman as given in the story by the Disability News Service.

agreed by consensus of the Disability Activism Society

written by Ali Wilkin

edited by John Urquhart

We note with extreme regret that the Isle of Man has become the first place in the UK to vote for assisted suicide (as disabled people we will not refer to it by the euphemistic “assisted dying”). 

We have deep concerns about this Bill, in a number of areas.  Firstly and most obviously, the goal of the Bill itself. We remain bitterly opposed to assisted suicide as a Party led on disability issues by disabled people. We particularly recognise the limited objections to this Bill. We are saddened at an absence of disabled voices in the media coverage of this development. But then, too, we have deep concerns regarding the campaign group which led the campaign on the Isle of Man (My Death, My Decision). 

We further have more familiar concerns with the failure of the media to include disabled people’s voices throughout the debate - a debate ultimately dominated by doctors both for and against. 

The idea that someone must be terminally ill and “reasonably expected” to die within 12 months is a concept with major flaws. It is especially so in comparison to the proposed UK legislation. That legislation, introduced by Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP, is opposed by a large number of disabled people and DPO’s - and there the time frame is 6 months. 

This is an area of medicine which is not an exact science, as evidenced by an improvement in the health of one of the major sponsors of the Bill itself - Esther Ranson. Further, there are as many times where doctors can be wrong about that time frame as right: they make educated guesses. This more extended period of time is, therefore, worrying.

Both more worrying and very related are concerns around safeguarding against coercion. As Isle of Man GP Dr Martin Rankin, a member of the Medical Society, observed: "The safeguards that are in place on this one, I'm not going to know if somebody has been coerced by a relative into ending their life sooner than they wish. So I really won't be getting involved in it." 

In no small part due to the normalised exclusion of disabled voices by the media it is doctors who have most loudly voiced fears of this Bill presenting a slippery slope. In 2023, in a poll by the Medical Society, slightly more than one third of GPs said they would consider leaving the Isle of Man if the bill passed.

We further have concerns with the campaign group involved in this process, My Death My Decision, and we are particularly concerned with the manner in which they portray disabled people’s views on assisted suicide, as well as their description of euthanasia on their website, which we consider to be deeply disingenuous. 

On their website, MDMD claim that 88% of people who “identify as having long standing conditions” support ‘assisted dying’ (according to a survey conducted by Natcen); and that disability organisations are “...either neutral, or don’t have a stance on assisted…” and they name four organisations with that position. 

In the first instance - whilst disabled people are not a monolith, a huge number of disabled people have been vehemently campaigning against the introduction of the UK legislation, ourselves included. There are many individual disabled people we can point to, such as actor Liz Carr. She made a stunning and profound documentary called Better Off Dead, which the BBC aired. She is far from alone; former paralympic athlete Tanni Grey-Thompson, who sits in the House of Lords, has spoken out forcefully against the Westminster legislation. 

The organisations that MDMD point to are not DPO’s (Disabled People's Organisations), all of which have spoken out against the legislation. (A disabled person’s organisation is led by disabled people.) The manner in which they represent disabled voices is therefore, at best, disingenuous, and at worst dishonest. 

This further extends to their description of euthanasia. In that description the possibility of it being perpetrated against someone who is not willing is omitted, making euthanasia seem merely a method by which suffering is ended. 

For the Isle of Man, for Jersey, and on current trajectory perhaps the whole of the UK, a very troubling future of struggle for disabled people’s liberation awaits.

by consensus of the Disability Activism Society

In our last statement on this issue we called these cuts violent. Today we say we were right to.

The decisions undertaken by Labour are not undertaken under a moral imperative that anyone moral could support. These cuts will disproportionately impact those with learning disabilities. Those with mental health conditions. The young, and the elderly. And, of course, those with the kinds of visible physical disabilities the public tends to imagine when they hear the word “disability”.

Being disabled - any kind - costs more. 

According to disability charity Scope, people living with a disability face extra costs that average £570 a month. All of the months. 

That adds up to a “disability tax” of about £6,840 a year. But one in four disabled people are paying more than £12,000 a year as a direct result of their impairment(s).

Imagine if you started adult life, at 18, and you were already £12,000 a year behind your peers no matter what. And on top of that, you face barriers to work that your peers also don’t. And which in some cases your peers contribute to!

Disabled people don’t have to imagine this. It is already our reality.

Even with DLA being extended to 18 for young people and children, there will be a gap from 18 to 22 where young disabled people will receive no extra funding whatsoever. How will they survive those years? How will they manage to navigate further education? Will they be able to at all? If we are to be excluded from education as a class from entry to adulthood - then how can we be expected to find work?

But there are structural concerns too. Councils use PIP awards to pay for care services, and under the new scheme people can lose their PIP award because their “points” are distributed across a number of areas instead of focused in one. This is a problem because then councils will either have to find extra funding from somewhere (requiring council tax rises) or services will be cut.

And carers will be hard hit by this too. 

Often, carers are unpaid family members, and the care they provide is essentially a labour of love. Not all carers are even adults: there are around 120,000 young carers in the UK. Most take care of a family member, often to the detriment of schooling and later career opportunities. This labour can be as much as tens of hours a week.

The number of young carers will almost certainly be pushed upwards by these cuts. It will increase against a troubling backdrop of families already struggling to find enough money to heat and eat. This is all on top of the cost of living crisis that already prevails.

The Government’s green paper claims that people on benefits are afraid of seeking work, but it ignores the root cause of that fear: people live on benefits are living in enforced deprivation - enforced deprivation which is meant to make suffering out of work so much worse than suffering in work that people do not complain so much as their working rights are eroded.

And often, that deprivation we speak of has been multigenerational. The heating and eating question is not new. Huddling up in blankets to avoid turning the heating on isn’t new. Trying to send the kids round to their mates’ houses for a sneaky free dinner isn’t new.

No real solutions have been offered for decades. Only castigation, crackdowns, and cuts.

As others have noted it is damning that there is always money for war, but not always money for welfare. 

We say opposing these cuts is a moral imperative and we call on you to stand with disabled people: DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) are organising a protest in London on the 26th, and online participation will be possible too through the hashtag #WelfareNotWarfare. Get involved!

And expect us!